Big Landlord and Small Peasant Landownership in Russia

Published:PravdaNo. 51, March 2, 1913.

      Published according to thePravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1975],

      Moscow,Volume 18,

      pages586-587.Translated:Stepan ApresyanTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Inconnection with the recent anniversary of February 19,

				1861,[1]a reminder of the present distribution of land in European Russia will not
be out of place.

Thelast official statistics of land distribution in European Russia
were published by the Ministry of the Interior and date from 1905.

Accordingto these statistics there were (in round numbers) about
30,000 big landlords owning over 500 dessiatines each, their total land
amounting to about 70,000,000 dessiatines.

Some10,000,000 poor peasant households owned thesame amountof land.

[GRAPHIC/ IMAGE ]

Itfollows that an the average there are about 330 poor peasant
families for each big landlord, each peasant family owning about 7
(seven) dessiatines, while each big landlord owns about 2,300
(two thousand three hundred) dessiatines.

Toshow this graphically, we have drawn the above diagram.

Thelarge white rectangle in the middle stands for the estate of a big
landlord. The small squares around it represent the small peasant holdings.

Altogetherthere are 324 squares, and the area of the white rectangle
equals 320 squares.

[1]Anniversaryof the abolition of serfdom in Russia.—Tr.